The home team's performance in the tournament is helping Germans to think positively again, writes Derek Scally in Berlin
The tears were real when two extra-time goals from Italy ended Germany's World Cup ride with a bump. Berliners with empty expressions wandered the streets of the capital, the black, red and gold tattoos on their cheeks smeared with tears. When I called German friends to commiserate, more than one - grown men - told me in choked voices that they "can't talk right now". German women were no better.
"A friend of mine sat in her smart architect apartment alone with a glass of wine and cried all evening," said designer Anna Ebeling. She suggests that women's tears are a side effect of the recent conversion by many women to the game. "They aren't used to experiencing the ups and downs that come with supporting a team."
Given their reputation for controlled coolness, the Germans' swing from angst to euphoria surprised millions of World Cup visitors, not to mention ex-pats who have had to live with Germany's "glass is half empty" depression for the last five years.
But there was a danger that, in a country prone to sudden mood swings, the World Cup elimination would kick Germany back into the depths of depression.
An extreme reaction came from the head of World Cup organisation for Berlin's city state government who shot himself in the head minutes after Italy won the title. When he died five days later his family spoke of "burnout" as a result of huge organisational responsibilities.
The Depression Barometer, an online survey conducted by a Berlin university, spiked on the day after Germany's defeat. Since then, however, values have once again dropped to a happy, non-depressed level.
"Feelings are infectious. If everyone looks at the same thing the mood can be neutralised, in the positive and negative sense," said Prof Fritz B Simon, the inventor of the barometer.
The positive barometer index mirrors the highest levels of confidence among business leaders in 15 years. Consumer spending too has gone through the roof and is holding steady, but only time will tell whether it is a sign of confidence in the future or merely a nation consoling itself with consumer durables.
German psychologists say the likelihood of post-World Cup depression depends on personal attitude.
"The World Cup had a liberating effect for the Germans, who otherwise have such a constrained outlook on things," said Dr Wolfgang Eirund, a psychiatrist. "It's completely normal to land back in reality after an enthralling event. But you can find your way out of a hole like that always: you have to set yourself new goals."
Dr Eirund has already set his own post-World Cup goal: after watching the matches with his neighbours at a little square in his street, they have arranged to meet there again regularly to play boules. And while Jürgen Klinsmann may have stood down as trainer of the German national side, people here are already talking of the positive "Klinsmann effect".
Before the tournament, he was mocked in the German press for his new ideas, risky methods and, above all, the positive thinking and self-belief he tried to pass on to his young players. Commentators suggested that he should have left the new-age thinking back home in California.
"Yet he made his team strong thanks to his positive thinking, bloody-mindedness and unshakeable belief in a defence that was criticised by all," said Dr Heiko Ernst, editor of Psychology Today magazine. Perhaps people can apply that in their lives to help overcome the can't-do attitude that often paralyses German life.
"Even now as we return to our normal attitude, the World Cup has done Germany and us Germans good and will be felt for a long time to come," said Dr Ernst.